我国可再生能源发展的经济学分析——基于租金理论视角

在常规能源资源逐步耗竭,生态环境日益恶化的背景下,可再生能源逐步替代常规能源成为大势所趋.但是目前我国可再生能源不仅没有与经济同步发展,甚至出现了常规能源对可再生能源的反替代.试图通过租金理论,分析我国可再生能源发展滞后的经济学原因,从而为我国加快发展可再生能源提出一些有针对性的政策建议.     

Intra-metropolitan shifts in labor demand and the adjustment of local markets

I offer new evidence on the adjustment of local labor markets to geographic shifts in labor demand within US metropolitan areas using a unique data set in which metropolitan subregions are geographically matched across the 1970–1980 and 1980–1990 decades. The evidence uncovered paints the following picture. Workers, especially those with less education, make incomplete adjustments within metropolitan areas in response to intra-metropolitan demand shifts. Although blacks may not make especially limited adjustments, they have disproportionately suffered deleterious effects from job movements because the demand shifts have tended to be away from their places of residence.     

What drives racial segregation? New evidence using Census microdata

Using restricted Census microdata that link households to the Census block in which they live, this paper re-examines the question of whether racial differences in sociodemographic characteristics can explain observed levels of racial segregation. We develop a simple measurement framework designed to make use of the rich joint distribution of individual and neighborhood characteristics that these data provide, analyzing segregation patterns in the San Francisco Bay Area. The results indicate that racial differences in the collective set of characteristics we consider do have the potential to explain a considerable amount of the observed segregation, although more so for Asians and especially Hispanics than whites and blacks. Different sociodemographic factors emerge as potentially important for each race.     

Rent Management – The Heart of Green Industrial Policy

At the heart of green industrial policy is rent management: government creating and withdrawing opportunities for profitable investment. This paper asks what the key factors are for rent management to succeed. Drawing on a range of literatures, the paper first deals with the critical success factors for ‘normal’ rent management and then turns to one of the most pressing and controversial issues of our time: how to bring about the transition to green energy. This is extra challenging because technological uncertainties are high, time horizons for investment are long, yet action is required now.     

Neighborhood quality and labor market outcomes: Evidence from quasi-random neighborhood assignment of immigrants

Settlement in a socially deprived neighborhood may hamper individual labor market outcomes because of lack of employed or highly skilled contacts. I investigate this hypothesis by exploiting a unique natural experiment that occurred between 1986 and 1998 when refugee immigrants to Denmark were assigned to municipalities quasi-randomly, which successfully addresses the methodological problem of endogenous neighborhood selection. I show that individuals sort into neighborhoods. Taking account of location sorting, living in a socially deprived neighborhood does not affect labor market outcomes of refugee men. Their labor market outcomes are also not affected by the overall employment rate and the overall average skill level in the neighborhood. However, an increase in the average skill level of non-Western immigrant men living in the neighborhood raises their employment probability, while an increase in the employment rate of co-national men living in the neighborhood raises their real annual earnings. This provides quasi-experimental evidence that residence-based job information networks are ethnically stratified.     

Pure rent taxation and allocation of capital in a two-sector open economy: A long-run analysis

In this paper, the long-run incidence of a tax on pure rent is analyzed in an OLG two-sector small open economy, in which one sector produces a capital good and one sector a consumer good. Contrary to what is obtained in a one-sector closed economy, a land rent tax does not necessarily foster nonhumam wealth accumulation and capital formation. The accommodating scheme for the government budget plays a crucial role for the effects of pure rent taxation. A rent tax stimulates nonhuman wealth if distortionary taxes on wealth or on income from nonland inputs are alleviated. The mechanism spurring capital formation is brought into action, instead, only when the rent tax is matched by a fall in capital taxation or, if the capital sector is capital intensive, by an increase in government spending on the capital good.     

Simulated economic impacts in applied trade modelling: A comparison of tariff aggregation approaches

This paper assesses the performance of two recently developed tariff aggregators in reducing tariff aggregation bias by analysing Swiss beef market liberalisation scenarios. Specific relevant sources of bias are addressed: substitution effects on import demand, Tariff Rate Quotas and overprotection in tariffs. The aggregators are linked to a global large-scale partial equilibrium model and benchmarked against a standard aggregator. The choice of the aggregation method shows considerable effects on simulated economic impacts, specifically if the dispersion in tariffs or tariff cuts is large. A large bias is revealed in simulated gains from trade liberalisation using the standard aggregator. The impacts on traded quantities are found to be overestimated, while price and welfare effects can be higher or lower by switching to alternative aggregation methods. By reducing aggregation bias and depicting negotiated tariff schedules more directly, the proposed aggregators enhance the contribution of trade modelling to evidence-based policy making.     

Value for money in energy efficiency retrofits in Ireland: grant provider and grant recipients

The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) administers the Better Energy Homes scheme to provide a financial incentive for home owners to engage in energy efficiency retrofits. This study analyses data from the scheme and Building Energy Rating data for participants to the scheme to examine the value for money achieved by households. In addition, this research identifies which retrofit combinations provide greatest value for money, in terms of energy efficiency gains, for the grant provider. We utilize an error-in-variables approach to model the variation in benefits accruing to households of varying characteristics. We find that household and grant provider surplus can be maximized in the short term by retrofitting less energy efficient and larger homes, timber or steel frame homes and houses rather and apartments. The types of retrofits leading to the greatest surplus for both household and grant provider include cavity wall insulation paired with either a boiler with heating controls or heating controls only retrofit.     

The Uncertainty of Academic Rent and Income Inequality: The OECD Panel Evidence

The article presents an alternative view on the education—income inequality relationship, which calls into question the neoclassical claim that education increases labor productivity and hence contributes to a higher output, wage and consequently more even income distribution. In the context of public policies, education needs to be seen not only as a factor of income mobility, but also as a “positional good,” which benefits graduates at the expense of non-graduates. Education generates “academic rent,” by which we mean uneven remuneration of workers based on academic signs of distinctions that do not necessarily reflect differences in productivity. Using the robust panel model on a sample of OECD (Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development) countries from 1980 to 2015, we show that investments in human capital lead to lower inequality, but overinvestments tends to increase income inequality, which may be related to academic rent. In discussing this result, we consider that uncertainty of academic rent under the condition of a rapid transformation of the workplace caused by the fourth industrial revolution.     

Job protection,housing market regulation,and the youth

Young Europeans experience high unemployment rates, job instability, and late emancipation. Meanwhile, they do not support reforms weakening protection on long‐term contracts. In this paper, we suggest a possible rationale for such reform distaste. When the rental market is strongly regulated, landlords screen applicants with regard to their ability to pay the rent. Protecting regular jobs offers a second‐best technology to sort workers, thereby increasing the rental market size. We provide a model where nonemployed workers demand protected jobs despite unemployment and the share of short‐term jobs increases, whereas the individual risk of dismissal is unaffected. Our theory can be extended to alternative risks and markets involving correlated risks and commitment under imperfect information.